


the water at your feet cakes like mud

by kuro49



Series: thirty days of writing [2]
Category: True Detective
Genre: Drabble, Gen, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-28
Updated: 2015-08-28
Packaged: 2018-04-17 15:26:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4671710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuro49/pseuds/kuro49
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Death comes, and it is a familiar thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the water at your feet cakes like mud

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt: _lost at the creek._
> 
> my true love detectives bring out all the pretentious in me.

Death comes in gruesome places. And it is lonely.

It leaves you feeling like there ought to be a whole lot less to it all than what you still concern yourself with. This thought crosses your mind once or twice before Rust. This thought becomes all consuming with him talking you into an early grave next to you in the passenger seat. And he gets under your skin like one thing about the job. It is not the violence, it is not the brutality of men. Well, it is not simply that.

What makes it hard to swallow is that death comes, and it is a familiar thing at this point.

Beyond the edge of town, where the grass grows wild and tall, where there isn’t much else, there is water that is more of a trickle between the rocks but less than what a river should be.

Here is where you find the body. 

There is a face and a name and a fucking life attached but you cannot, for the life of you, remember.

This is not the first case you are assigned once you are made detective, and naturally, this is not about to be the last or anywhere close to that number. The extent of the rot is not enough to make you throw up, and you are reminded keenly of when you developed the stomach for cruelty like this. The water that runs make the soil mud at your feet, has you tracking brown into your house for days.

It takes you three months and another body before you catch the killer.

Sometimes, you wonder, if one less would be dead if you had Rust Cohle as your partner _before_. And that single word encompasses many things. You don’t glance at him out of the corner of your eye, you don’t give him the satisfaction. After all, you are not the only one surprised when you asked and he replied something in the affirmative that has him coming along to this wretched place.

“Sentimentality still looks like shit on you, Marty.”

You give him a middle finger extended with as much grace as you can muster in the last lights of the sky. You are watching him drag in another breath, let out another. His chest rising that tiny increment of space. He looks to you when he offers his Camel lights and you figure there are worst things than an old crime scene and two old men trying not to relive their better days. 

You indulge him when you take a drag.

The way you breathe out at the same moment he does is nothing less than a coincidence.


End file.
